epistemology as a trap

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There are two traditional understandings of what makes a theoretical engagement ‘true’ or preferable from a scientific standpoint, at least in the social sciences. The first is one that views theory as corresponding to an extra-discursive object (correspondence theory of truth) and another according to which a theory’s statements are consistent with a set of true statements (coherence theory of truth).

However, Bellofiore argues that both these take as their starting point the opposition between the knowing subject and the object of knowledge. The latter is typically seen as being an external real object, and the subject and object are assumed to be independent in their opposition and pre-constituting. Both in turn have the same ‘theoretical field’ in Althusserian terms; they both have a justification of truth as a necessary presupposition external to the discourse that one is willing to ground. As Bellofiore summarizes:

It is the search for the method: before, and separately, from the individual sciences. (Bellofiore, 2025, p. 16)

Rather than looking at the object of inquiry and relating it to the capacity of the knowing subject to manipulate and understand it, method is seen as detached from the very process of knowing itself. This is common to the systematic empiricism held by many in the social sciences, particularly those who are “positivists”. By systematic empiricism, I refer to the practice of believing that a correct and accurate description of society can be obtained through methods that almost exclusively base themselves on empirical observations. Science which is empirical is different from being empiricist; the latter often rejects any legitimacy of non-observable forces or categories.

Despite being hegemonic, positivism is actually much looser of a term in the social sciences than one would think. Due to its hegemony, many in political science, economics, and sociology assume that their methods are unquestionably the correct ones. In the field of political economy, the method applied to reproduce the concrete totality of real relations fits the nature of studying social relations itself. As Marx argues in the preface to Volume 1, the power of abstraction is used in place of the chemical agents and experimental design of the natural sciences.

Funnily enough, I believe that Marx’s approach to science has much more in common with the methods of hard sciences than does the positivism of mainstream social sciences. His many references to the natural sciences are an example of how the necessity to abstract, analyze and synthesize determinations (functions and characteristics) of entities is seen to be a general theoretical task of both the social and natural sciences.

Bellofiore, Ricardo. “On Some Problems in Marxian Theory. A Discussion of Michael Heinrich’s Science of Value.” Quaderni Di Dialettica2025 Numero Speciale (June 2025). https://www.dialetticaefilosofia.itfiles/01_Bellofiore_on_Heinrich_FINAL.pdf

Willer, David. Systematic Empiricism: Critique of a Pseudoscience. With Internet Archive. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1973. http://archive.org/details/systematicempiri0000will.